Sunday, July 31, 2011

Mama Cathy (or MC as most of us call her) is an awesome friend of mine. She was there at my first 100 miler and walked me into the finish. I was in rough shape at that race and she just gently pushed and nudged me on. Then a month or so later I flew to Modesto to run her first marathon with her. We have seen each other a handful of times since then. She is one rocking lady. She is a single mom of 5 girls, she works full time and finds time to run. She is way stronger than she realizes and I feel super lucky that she is doing this race with me. Actually wouldn't have even signed up for the race if she hadn't said she could be there. I picked it because it was close to her and I thought we would have fun. ﻿

Me and Mama Cathy runner her first marathon. Wahoooooooo. I think she was most impressed with my version of a Chariots of Fire ballet while running, bahahahaha. Ok she seemed slightly horrified at my singing and dancing at first but I think I wore on her over those 26 miles.

I sent out the following questions to Mama Cathy:

Name: Cathy

You are a Running Mom so we already know you ROCK! So tell us what running accomplishment you are most proud of.

I am most proud of training and finishing my first marathon. the bug has bit me:)

What do you most look forward to in this race?

The thing I look forward to in this race is spending time with two awesome running mamas who I adore and of course being at a race. I LOVE races!!

When do you think you are going to do an Ultra ?

OHHH the Ultra question, well I do have my sights on a 50k, will see how that goes:).

What/When is your next race?

My next big race is Nike women's Marathon OCT 16th, I will be running with TEAM IN TRAINING and I love TEAM!!!

Anything else we should know about you?

I love to run, I have 5 beautiful daughters and an awesome assortment of running and non-running friends that I adore!! I want to learn how to rock climb, kayak, do a triathlon someday and just ENJOY LIFE.....ITS SHORT LETS LIVE!!!!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Race day is approaching quickly. I have calmed down somewhat. I am now looking forward to a long run and the hills well all I can do is tackle them one at a time. I feel good about the race. It may have more elevation gain than Leadville but then I have never shied away from a challenge. This course may take over 24hrs on my good day but I will still get er done. On that note I think it is time to meet the awesome folks that will be helping me out. I will post pacers in another entry.

I am lucky enough to have family in the San Fransisco area. My cousin Todd and his wife Kathrin live in SF and actually seemed slightly excited to try out the whole crewing thing, bahahahahaha. I would say that their enthusiasm is due to my lack of details on what crewing meant but, honestly I gave them the low down and they were still in. Conclusion: They are related so they are probably slightly insane as well (must be in the gene pool). They are the sweetest couple.

Kathrin with Chloe. We met up with them in VT in June. They played with Chloe for hours, love love love that.

Race day is approaching quickly. I have calmed down somewhat. I am now looking forward to a long run and the hills well all I can do is tackle them one at a time. I feel good about the race. It may have more elevation gain than Leadville but then I have never shied away from a challenge. This course may take over 24hrs on my good day but I will still get er done. On that note I think it is time to meet the awesome folks that will be helping me out. I will post pacers in another entry.

I am lucky enough to have family in the San Fransisco area. My cousin Todd and his wife Kathrin live in SF and actually seemed slightly excited to try out the whole crewing thing, bahahahahaha. I would say that their enthusiasm is due to my lack of details on what crewing meant but, honestly I gave them the low down and they were still in. Conclusion: They are related so they are probably slightly insane as well (must be in the gene pool). They are the sweetest couple.

Kathrin with Chloe. We met up with them in VT in June. They played with Chloe for hours, love love love that.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Headlands 100 miler is in 2wks. I have run hard, I have trained super hard. I have found every hill withing 30 miles of my town and run up and down it. Am I ready for this race?

I don't have a clue. Begin...Freak Out Mode. Where I start hyper organizing everything because it is all I can control at this point. I mean look at these elevation charts, they don't look good clockwise or counter clockwise and in the end it is over 17K of elevation gain total. Holy Shit! Did I just say 17K of elevation gain? Can my quads do that? Will I even be able to get back down once I get up on the last loop? I am a little nervous. I was way more nervous for the few days this week I thought I had to run this thing solo with no pacers. Not to worry some folks have really come through and I will have a pacer for the worst part for sure. Thank you Jimmi and Cathy. You two are the BOMB DIGGITY!!!!!! Ok back to freak out. This is where I start to worry if I trained enough or in this case too much. What should my nutrition plan be? Why didn't I get sick at the last race? How do I repeat that? What will I do without Marny cramming food down my throat when the last thing I want to do is eat?

As you can see, I am nervous so, time to get to planning. The goal for this race is to finish and under 24 if at all possible. Ok under 24 or kill my quads trying, lol. I know I have to stay on top of my nutrition. I have to make sure I am sucking down 200 calories an hour. I need to make sure I am getting in ensure when I see the crew but am not going to carry it this time. My plan is to go as light as possible and hope the crew can meet me often. The other portion of my nutrition plan is sports chews (need to put those on the shopping list) and to eat normal food every time I get to an aid station. I also think I need to take my vitamin drinks like the last race and well pray for the best. I just bought gaiters, will try them out this week. Apparently the sand is horrendous in spots. I will take tons of gear because rumor has it it gets darn cold in SF this time of year. Bottom line: I can do this, I know I can, I just have to believe in myself and stay on top of my nutrition and go super slow off the top. You should hear me chanting: I think I can, I know I can, I know I can.......Oh crap this is going to hurt.

OMG! This is nuts. Why do I do this? And next year I need to do 4-5 races like this in a row if I want a chance at my dream race. Oh me oh my. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

I met one of those super moms (you all know at least one of them) back in Texas. Holly is amazing and the author of I Heart Bowheads. Anyhow she has been looking into what makes a mom click. You can find my interview here and if you are interested in answering her questions she totally wants more mamas to give her feed back so leave her a comment and she will send you the questionnaire.

Running:
I haven't gotten in much traditional running lately but since Chloe is currently injured (her foot is broken we think) I have gotten in some great hill training. Chloe has totally been down with me running up and down the stairs of all of these mountain temples with her on my back. I love that she is excited to get a ride and I get in an awesome workout. So while I do not have any mileage to report my legs are sore from carrying almost 40lbs up and down Japanese Mountains.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

As most of you know, I am in Japan for a few weeks. We are having a great time sight seeing. I must say my running has fallen off a bit but, I did manage to still hit 78 miles last week even with traveling here and the busy day﻿s. I have been running off of the base. I just head on down the coast. On my first 12 miler I ran into a lighthouse in a little village down the way, it is so quaint, love the little town and the lighthouse area. There is some sort of shrine in a cave. I took pictures for the blog this morning but I am having a tough time uploading them.

Running here is super easy, there are bathrooms on almost every corner and tons of water fountains. The only negative is how hot it is. Even at 6am it is already near 90 and somewhere near 100% humidity. It is hot hot hot. Last I checked a Japanese woman was in 1st place at Badwater, no wonder, training in this heat would be perfect for that race. I love how many people I see of all ages out running, it is completely impressive. It feels just a tad hotter than TX to me here and you would never see anyone out running there in this heat.

I am beginning to freak out a bit about my 100 miler coming up. I know I have trained hard and well but what was I thinking over 17,000 ft of elevation gain and if you go up 17K you have to go back down so the race is going to hurt. But, if I can't do this then I can't do any of my bucket list races so I better just get it over with. My goal is just to finish, no time goals, no nothing, just get to the finish line in one piece everything else is gravy. I just ordered gaiters because while I was perusing some race reports I realized the sand is pretty intense and the runners said you have to empty your shoes if you don't have on gaiters. AHHHHHH!!!!!! Even that made me freak just a little. I will have a strong crew: Mama Cathy, my cousin Todd and his wife Kathryn and then an awesome pacer named Jon. With three crew persons I should have tons of support at each station so that will help with easing the worry of what to have on me. I just need to stop freaking out and believe in myself and my training. I can do this. I can do anything I put my mind to. I can do this. I can do anything I put my mind to. I can do this.....Relentless Forward Motion!!!!

I heard a podcast on sodium and I think on both of my previous hot races I have been way off on my sodium. You need 600-1K mg of sodium an hour and at both races I didn't stick to that very well, at one race I had bad swelling in my extremities and we should have known something was up when we saw my feet but not even medical realized something was wrong. I think I stopped taking sodium all together when the sun went down at that race and I surely wasn't taking it every hour. At Heartland I started peeing like crazy in the middle of the night, my cells were getting rid of liquid to up the balance of the sodium, we should have realized there was no way for me to be peeing that much if everything was ok. So I am going to work on that, work on changing out shoes and work on finding out a caffeine pill as opposed to coffee. The stuff I learn on podcasts while I am training, LOVE IT!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Ok Folks I have a handful of items not claimed from the raffle last week and since I am headed to Japan in a few short days I want to get them out to some awesome participants of this 5K. So I re-raffled them. Please PM me an address ASAP if your name comes up here as a winner. Mommysarunner@hotmail.com. Thank you again to all of you for participating and to all of the wonderful companies who donated items. We earned close to $3,500 for JDRF. Wahooooo!!!